Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

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In November, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) will publish its report into how the EU spent its budget in 2010. If the trend of recent years is continued, the report is likely to be critical of spending on research projects.

Last year, the ECA found that there was a “material level” of errors affecting the €5.5 billion the EU spent on research in 2009. The ECA defines “material” as between 2% and 5%. With the amount the EU spends on research set to increase over the coming years, there is strong political pressure to ensure that this area of expenditure offers the best possible value for money. The EU has earmarked €7bn for the next set of projects under the seventh framework programme for research (2007-13). In 2013, the annual envelope will be €10bn. The problems identified by the ECA involve organisations being reimbursed for costs that are not substantiated by supporting documents.

Complications

It is not only the ECA that is critical of the EU’s research project funding. The research community complains repeatedly too. But its griefs are that the administrative burdens for obtaining EU funding are excessive, so that only large organisations with substantial administrative structures can navigate their way through them. In February last year, 13,000 researchers from 47 countries signed a petition calling for urgent simplification of the EU’s research programmes.

The European Commission is sensitive to the criticisms from the ECA and the research community, and in April last year it presented its own ideas on simplification. They included reducing the number of different types of applicable rules, depending on the type of organisation applying for funding and the type of activity. Currently, these vary according to whether the applicant is a university, a research centre or an industry group. Greater use of flat-rate payments could also reduce the scope for errors in calculating actual costs, the Commission suggested.

The Commission stressed that any changes to the rules must remain within the current regulatory framework for research funding. There is an opportunity for a major streamlining of procedures with the rules for the next multiannual programme, Horizon 2020, which should be agreed within the next 12 months.

Payment changes

The Commission has suggested moving away from a cost-based approach to a results-based system. Researchers would be awarded lump sums based on the estimated costs of running a project. Payment would depend on the assessment of results and would require greater input from scientific experts to assess projects’ quality and value.

This move to a system that places greater trust in the ability of researchers to make effective use of EU funds has strong support from the scientific community – although there is some concern that this approach might lead to a push towards research projects strongly targeted to market demands.

Results-based assessment could lead to “less risky projects”, warns Maria Da Graça Carvalho, a Portuguese centre-right MEP who served as Portugal’s minister for higher education and science, in a report she drafted on simplification.

“Europe has to maintain frontier research as the basis for innovation.”